A weblog, most often referred to as a “blog” is a web-based publication consisting most frequently of periodic articles. Effectively, blogs enable web-based communities to exist, share ideas and communicate with regard to a wide variety of topics. The articles are most often arranged in reverse chronological order (e.g., the most recent appearing first). Conventionally, weblogs, or blogs, were manually created and updated. However, with the increase in popularity, recent developments have emerged that include tools that facilitate automating the creation and/or maintenance of blogs.
Today, the range of categories of blogs are countless. For instance, blog content topics can range from geographically focused topics and points of interest to political topics. Political candidates and supporters often use blogging mechanisms and sites to reach out to other fellow supporters. The scope of topics is endless.
While some blogs are written by a solo author, others are written by a group of authors. Sometimes the blog is interactive (e.g., allowing a visitor or reader to leave a public and/or private comment). On the other hand, sometimes, they are not interactive effectively operating as an way to disperse information.
Traditionally, a blogger would employ a personal software package to assist in creating a blog. Today, the availability of blog hosting sites and Web services to provide editing via the Web has proliferated. As well, blog generation tools have continued to evolve and emerge to provide the blogger with greater flexibility and power in creating a blog.
Today, with the increased popularity, blogging has essentially combined a personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier. More particularly, track-backs, as well as comment are common mechanisms of blogs thus increasing penetration and interest. With these mechanisms, virtually any reader or visitor to a blog is able to participate by posting a comment or linking from an external blog (e.g., track-back).
Generally, a track-back is a mechanism that represents a first blog that is referenced in a second blog whereas a link to the first blog is provided in the second blog. For example, a blog can provide track-backs to other blogs of a similar topic or to other blogs that the blogger may think provide relevant information to a specific blog community.
A comment is a mechanism that permits a reader or visitor to post a remark, thought or opinion on a particular topic or thread. The comments increase the interactivity and participation of a particular blog. For example, readers can post answers to questions, opinions on topics, etc.
With the increase in popularity comes an increase in content volume. As such, blog readers are often inundated with blog items relating to a subject or topic. Currently, no effective manner of rating, filtering and/or focusing blog items to a user are available. Today, blogs are rated solely upon the popularity of the author. Therefore, a user is forced to sift through the voluminous number of blog items with hopes to locate items of interest.